Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the most senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, said Wednesday that Israel should “wipe out” the Palestinian town of Huwara in the West Bank.
The remark by Smotrich — who is the finance minister and also a minister in the Defense Ministry in charge of civilian affairs in the West Bank — came days after a terrorist from Huwara shot dead two Israeli brothers, which was followed by extremist settlers rampaging through the Nablus-area town and setting homes and cars on fire, resulting in one Palestinian shot dead and several badly hurt.
The Sunday evening rioting was explicitly backed the following morning by coalition backbencher Zvika Fogel, a lawmaker for the extremist Otzma Yehudit party, which triggered widespread outrage. On Wednesday, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Prosecutor Amit Aisman cleared police to launch an investigation of Fogel, head of the Knesset’s National Security Committee and a former IDF brigadier general, over his comments.
The new remark Wednesday was made by Smotrich, a far more senior politician, and it arguably went even further — saying that as a matter of policy, Jerusalem should seek to remove the entire town, which has a population of some 7,000.